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Tiffany Bluemle to be Honored at Champlain College Convocation as 2017's Distinguished Citizen

Professor Cyndi Brandenburg to welcome Class of 2021

Burlington, VT (08/11/2017) — The incoming Class of 2021 at Champlain College will hear from two women leaders in their fields at the annual Convocation on Aug. 25.

Tiffany Bluemle, director of Change the Story VT, will receive the 2017 Champlain College Distinguished Citizen award and Professor Cyndi Brandenburg of the Champlain College Core Division will provide the honorary welcome address from the faculty as the winner of the College's 2017 Edward Phelps Lyman Professorship award.

Along with Champlain President Donald J. Laackman and Senior Vice President for Academics Laurie Quinn, Bluemle will share her perspective and experiences with the members of the incoming first-year students as part of the College's Orientation Weekend ceremonies.

Champlain expects to welcome an incoming class of more than 600 students from across the country and from countries around the world, majoring in a wide range of areas in Champlain's four divisions of study: Education and Human Studies, Information Technology and Sciences, Communication and Creative Media and the Robert P. Stiller School of Business.

Distinguished Citizen Award

This is the 56th year of the Champlain College Distinguished Citizen award, which honors community leaders in Vermont. Tiffany Bluemle's accomplishments are particularly inspiring in light of Champlain's focus on leadership related to women's issues, Quinn noted. Bluemle has been a speaker at the College's annual Women's Empowerment Initiative, an annual event featuring women leaders and workshops for students and the community.

Bluemle has led Change The Story VT, a multi-year, systemic approach to improving women's economic opportunity, since 2015. Prior to that, she was executive director of Vermont Works for Women for 17 years.

After a brief stint on the Mondale presidential campaign, Bluemle worked as a middle and high school history teacher and at NYC Outward Bound, where she developed a deep passion for helping young people discover and develop their talent and voice.

Over the past decade, Princeton University, the John Merck Fund, KeyBank, and the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce have honored her work. Bluemle received a Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and her B.A. from Princeton. She is a former member of Princeton's Board of Trustees and currently serves on the boards of Vermont Energy Investment Corporation and Public Assets Institute. She lives in Burlington with her partner and two sons.

Edward Phelps Lyman Professorship

The Edward Phelps Lyman Professorship bears the name of a full-time faculty member of the College community who has shown dedication to students and Champlain College through a record of service and excellence in teaching and advising, and through substantive work on faculty and College committees.

Dr. Cyndi Brandenburg, who received the 2017 Edward Phelps Lyman Professorship award in May, will continue the Champlain tradition of faculty members welcoming new students to their college experience.

Professor Brandenburg is a neuroscientist with a bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Vermont. She began teaching lab science courses at Champlain in 1999, and when Champlain introduced the interdisciplinary Core curriculum in 2007, she began teaching an array of integrated and inquiry-based courses.

As a research scientist turned interdisciplinary teacher, Brandenburg is particularly interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in general, and Interdisciplinarity and Integration in particular, with an eye towards fusing such seemingly disparate fields as the Sciences and the Humanities. Her creativity and dedication in t

About Champlain College

Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Quebec and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and more than 60 online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 382 Colleges: 2018 Edition. Champlain College is featured in the "Fiske Guide to Colleges" for 2018 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. Champlain was named one of the "Most Innovative Schools" in the North by the U.S. News and World Report's 2017 "America's Best Colleges and is in the top 100 in the overall list of "Best Regional Universities in the North. For more information, visit www.champlain.edu.

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Tiffany Bluemle, director of Change the Story VT, will receive the 2017 Champlain College Distinguished Citizen award on Aug. 25.

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